Going digital is right at the top of the organizational agenda, providing the foundation to increase efficiency, reduce cost and drive an enriched user experience through real-time fulfilment. Digital technologies can provide organizations with a platform to understand more about their users than ever before, unlocking the value of personal data.
However, organizations face complex challenges while grappling with the digital journey. How do business leaders find the right balance between leveraging personal data for insight-based decision-making and maintaining privacy, security and ethics?
What strategic privacy decisions should security leaders while trying to maintain this balance? And importantly, how can organizations leverage technology to ensure consistent application in a cost-effective manner at scale?
Invest in privacy engineering skills
Technology continues to evolve, with processing speeds doubling every few years and innovative technologies emerging to meet ever-changing user expectations and demands. This fast-paced change is causing a seismic shift in privacy expectations of users and regulators. It is a constant challenge for organizations to ensure they are evolving their privacy by design practices to meet expectations.
What might have been an appropriate safeguard for the effective protection of personal data yesterday may be outdated tomorrow. When it comes to building privacy into business IT systems, data protection regulations such as the EU’s GDPR refer to state-of-the-art as the guiding light for appropriate technical design choices.
In general, state-of-the-art is reached when existing scientific knowledge and research is brought to market maturity, and when possible, references international standards. Often, state-of-the-art technology is expensive and complex to deploy across an organization’s digital IT landscapes.
Therefore, it’s imperative for organizations to acquire the right privacy engineering skills as a business imperative. To meet technology-based privacy needs in 2022, it will be essential for companies to invest in their workforce. To gain a competitive advantage, companies should provide support, resources and training for security professionals and privacy engineers to implement state-of-the-art privacy practices into business IT systems.
Leverage privacy-enhancing technologies
Privacy-enhancing technologies are…